OK...we're probably not going to see eye to eye on this, but I'll state my view for the record. It is one thing for local governments to support local businesses by creating environments that encourage those businesses. Local governments to this sort of economic development all the time in the form of tax breaks, environmental improvements, etc. Both companies have taken advantage of these type of local incentives. I don't have a membership, so I cannot see archived articles in the Ludington Daily News, but I don't doubt you're wrong. But, searching the WI-DOT website and the WI governors site, I see references to grants under the "Harbor Assistance Program" to both Manitowoc and Milwaukee for dock improvements (in the millions of dollars). I've also found references in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to $2 million in the City of Milwaukee budget to build a new terminal building on the WI side, but I don't honestly know if that ever came to completion.
It is an entirely different thing (in my mind, at least) for the government to come in and provide taxpayer money to help start a business that is going to compete with another business. This isn't help creating an environment to help the business succeed...this is help starting the business from the ground up so the owners don't have to risk much of their own money. The owners themselves said that this assistance was "necessary"...in other words, they were not willing to start the business if they had to take out an unsubsidized loan and risk their own capital. In all, it looks like the Lubar family investment company put up ~$4.4 million on the proposed $18.9 million construction cost for the boat (less than 25%). I don't know how the final budget figures compared to the pre-construction proposed figures, so it's possible they put up more if the costs went higher. In any case, we're talking about money that is: 1) an order of magnitude greater than the local economic developments leveraged by both companies, 2) a critical component of one company's start-up plan to compete with another company that did risk their own money.
You're throwing a lot of vague accusations around (that are very deragatory) without saying anything specific.
For one, you seem to be implying that some of my "facts" were suspect. We've both stated some things that are fact and some that are opinion. If you're accusing me of lying, please quit being vague about your accusations so I can produce references where possible. You've also accused Lake Michigan Carferry of misleading the public with bogus news stories. Can you also be specific with that claim? I think most people here agree that the wikipedia edits and the former version of the website run by Van Oosterhout are biased and more than a little childish. But, as strongly as it's fixed in your mind, there currently isn't any evidence that Lake Michigan Carferry was involved (I'm not trying to make a case that they weren't....just going on what we know). So, beyond that, what "bogus news stories" are you referring to?
You also haven't responded to my restaurant example. Given your last post, let's also assume that both restaurants accepted a city grant to make local sidewalk improvements and free advertising the in the chamber of commerce guide. So, you've sunk your money into one restaurant but the guy next to you only contributed 23% of the start-up costs in his own money and the rest was a government subsidized loan that he could default on with no repurcussions. Now, can you honestly tell me that you wouldn't be upset by that? Would just ignore it, and try to work twice as hard without thinking that it was unfair (as you imply Lake Michigan Carferry should do)?
You make a good point (I don't know too much about that time period, but I'll take what you say as truth for the sake of this discussion), but you're confusing some of the issues. Specifically, you're confusing the boat (the Badger) with the companies that have owned it. You're talking about a time when the boat was owned and run by rail shipping companies. I don't know precisely who owned it during the time you're talking about, but I think it was probably a company called MWT (though it could have still been C&O). Eventually, MWT did go under and all the boats were shut down.
Enter capitalism. A businessman came along several years later (in the early 1990s) and put up his own money to buy a piece of property (the boat) because he thought he had a business idea that could work. Let me emphasize: different people forming a different company with a different mission (passenger traffic). Regardless of your point about tax money being used to help support the previous company (that happened to own the same boat), that had no effect on this new company who started from scratch with their own capital. So, the "Badger folks" you're talking about are completely different people than the company that may have been bailed out 20 years earlier.
Imagine a restaurant is struggling and gets some public help (just pretend). After a while and despite the help, it still goes under. You have an idea for a new restaurant and put up your own money to buy the building and equipment. You open, and start making a living. Then, a restaurant opens up next door where the owner is not risking his own money because he has gotten a federally subsidized loan (ignoring for now that this approval was very controversial and smacked of quid pro quo). Would you feel OK having someone competing with you under these circumstances just because the building you're in happened to get government assistance in the past (and long before you were there)?
God forbid healthy competition forces them to invest in other services or upgrade their aging services.
Part of the issue starting the ill-will between these companies (not mentioned in the articles) is that this competition may not be "healthy", but is government subsidized for one of the competitors and that subsidy involves some politics that appear shady. I'm not trying to defend childish behavior (which may or may not be tied to the company), but trying to give some context to this confrontation. Please see a post I wrote earlier about some of the backstory here:
Once someone knows how to browse the internet, anyone with any amount of intelligence can figure out how to edit a wiki.
Wow...simply not true. I know it might surprise the demographic who reads slashdot, but there are still lots of people out there who are very uncomfortable with using computers to do anything. They aren't stupid - they probably have many skills that us computer-literate folk would have a very hard time acquiring. But, they may just barely understand the concept using a computer to browse the web withoug feeling like they can figure out how to edit a webpage. The internet (and most things technology) are viewed as a giant mystery to some people - they are happy to use it, but the thought of being able to edit or contribute is just foreign.
Lastly, anyone who uses their own ignorance as an argument is someone to be avoided.
I agree with your point that anyone could find someone to help edit a page if they didn't want to do it themselves. But, I find it ironic that so many people here were venomous toward the RIAA for going after grandmothers who "obviously" didn't know enough to download music, but are happy to vilify the people playing the "ignorant" card when the issue at hand doesn't isn't something slashdot can rally behind.
I mentioned this in another post, but there's a lot more to the story than what is reflected in TFA or wikipedia.
Customers that just want to get from point A to point B (without driving) will generally want to get there as fast as possible unless the transportation is part of the reason to take the trip. That obviously makes the Lake Express ferry appealing to a fair number of people, and it is likely that some people that would have taken the Badger otherwise will now opt for the Lake Express ferry.
Normally this would just be a free market issue - let the company with the best service at the lowest price win out. The ill-will comes in because the Lake Express ferry received a very controversial federally subsidized loan to start their business (minimizing the financial risk taken by the individuals starting the company).
Much of the community around the Badger felt like this was unfair because it amounted to the federal government subsidizing one company to compete against another. Much of the community around the Lake express ferry thought that the Badger people were just whining, or didn't care how it happened as long as their community saw the economic gain of the new ferry.
I forget some of the details now, but IIRC it appeared especially controversial because this was an unusual application of this particular maritime subsidy program and the congressional representative heading the relevant committee happens to have the ship builder in their district that built the Lake Express ferry. So, to some people it looked like thinly-veiled quid pro quo.
Not trying to argue a point here....just want people to know that (though the wikipedia war is childish), there is a lot more to the story than what's in the linked articles.
Yup...the Badger was one of the C&O ferries, built in the early 1950's. When C&O finally sold off the ferries another company (MWT I think) ran them primarily as freight ships for a while before they finally had to shut them down. It just wasn't profitable after it became so easy to get rail traffic through Chicago and when maintenance costs for the ferries increased with their age. The boats sat idle for a while before a businessman invested a bunch of money to refurbish one ship (the Badger) as primarily a passenger ship in the early 1990's. It is still a coal-fired steam ship (reciprocating, not turbines)....really interesting both historically and mechanically.
I know TFA was about the wikipedia war, but the underlying political debate that started the ill-will between these companies is also really interesting and doesn't get mentioned much in the linked articles or the wikipedia entries.
Well, they are trying to integrate WiFi, Bluetooth and all this other stuff. Why? For $100 bucks, I wouldn't expect all the bells and whistles.
At least as far as WiFi is concerned, it really seems like a must-have in order to make them useful. The target market for these machines is in developing countries where the buildings are not outfitted for wired network access. It is much easier to install the infrastructure for one wireless access point rather than rewire the whole building. This is the same reason wireless phones have taken off so quickly in developing places that didn't even have landline phones before. It takes far less capital investment to get wireless connectivity up and running.
And people who "meticulously hand optomize" their code annoy the crap out of me. Run it, tweak it, run it again. Was the second run faster? Then tweak some more.
Do you have a better idea? It seems like there must be a better way to do this, but the reality is that he's getting speeds much better than any automatic method to try and speed things up. The article claims his code produce a speed increase of ~30% on supercomputing platforms. That's nothing to shrug off just because the method of getting it seems clumsy. Would you rather do without those speedups because you didn't like the way he got there?
I can't wait until they start coming out with digital video technology that emulates the warmth and depth of VHS. I'll bet that opportunity doesn't slip by some marketing department somewhere...
Slashdot Mirror
It is an entirely different thing (in my mind, at least) for the government to come in and provide taxpayer money to help start a business that is going to compete with another business. This isn't help creating an environment to help the business succeed...this is help starting the business from the ground up so the owners don't have to risk much of their own money. The owners themselves said that this assistance was "necessary"...in other words, they were not willing to start the business if they had to take out an unsubsidized loan and risk their own capital. In all, it looks like the Lubar family investment company put up ~$4.4 million on the proposed $18.9 million construction cost for the boat (less than 25%). I don't know how the final budget figures compared to the pre-construction proposed figures, so it's possible they put up more if the costs went higher. In any case, we're talking about money that is: 1) an order of magnitude greater than the local economic developments leveraged by both companies, 2) a critical component of one company's start-up plan to compete with another company that did risk their own money.
You're throwing a lot of vague accusations around (that are very deragatory) without saying anything specific. For one, you seem to be implying that some of my "facts" were suspect. We've both stated some things that are fact and some that are opinion. If you're accusing me of lying, please quit being vague about your accusations so I can produce references where possible. You've also accused Lake Michigan Carferry of misleading the public with bogus news stories. Can you also be specific with that claim? I think most people here agree that the wikipedia edits and the former version of the website run by Van Oosterhout are biased and more than a little childish. But, as strongly as it's fixed in your mind, there currently isn't any evidence that Lake Michigan Carferry was involved (I'm not trying to make a case that they weren't....just going on what we know). So, beyond that, what "bogus news stories" are you referring to?
You also haven't responded to my restaurant example. Given your last post, let's also assume that both restaurants accepted a city grant to make local sidewalk improvements and free advertising the in the chamber of commerce guide. So, you've sunk your money into one restaurant but the guy next to you only contributed 23% of the start-up costs in his own money and the rest was a government subsidized loan that he could default on with no repurcussions. Now, can you honestly tell me that you wouldn't be upset by that? Would just ignore it, and try to work twice as hard without thinking that it was unfair (as you imply Lake Michigan Carferry should do)?
Enter capitalism. A businessman came along several years later (in the early 1990s) and put up his own money to buy a piece of property (the boat) because he thought he had a business idea that could work. Let me emphasize: different people forming a different company with a different mission (passenger traffic). Regardless of your point about tax money being used to help support the previous company (that happened to own the same boat), that had no effect on this new company who started from scratch with their own capital. So, the "Badger folks" you're talking about are completely different people than the company that may have been bailed out 20 years earlier.
Imagine a restaurant is struggling and gets some public help (just pretend). After a while and despite the help, it still goes under. You have an idea for a new restaurant and put up your own money to buy the building and equipment. You open, and start making a living. Then, a restaurant opens up next door where the owner is not risking his own money because he has gotten a federally subsidized loan (ignoring for now that this approval was very controversial and smacked of quid pro quo). Would you feel OK having someone competing with you under these circumstances just because the building you're in happened to get government assistance in the past (and long before you were there)?
Part of the issue starting the ill-will between these companies (not mentioned in the articles) is that this competition may not be "healthy", but is government subsidized for one of the competitors and that subsidy involves some politics that appear shady. I'm not trying to defend childish behavior (which may or may not be tied to the company), but trying to give some context to this confrontation. Please see a post I wrote earlier about some of the backstory here:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195215&cid =15995832/
Wow...simply not true. I know it might surprise the demographic who reads slashdot, but there are still lots of people out there who are very uncomfortable with using computers to do anything. They aren't stupid - they probably have many skills that us computer-literate folk would have a very hard time acquiring. But, they may just barely understand the concept using a computer to browse the web withoug feeling like they can figure out how to edit a webpage. The internet (and most things technology) are viewed as a giant mystery to some people - they are happy to use it, but the thought of being able to edit or contribute is just foreign.
Lastly, anyone who uses their own ignorance as an argument is someone to be avoided.
I agree with your point that anyone could find someone to help edit a page if they didn't want to do it themselves. But, I find it ironic that so many people here were venomous toward the RIAA for going after grandmothers who "obviously" didn't know enough to download music, but are happy to vilify the people playing the "ignorant" card when the issue at hand doesn't isn't something slashdot can rally behind.
Normally this would just be a free market issue - let the company with the best service at the lowest price win out. The ill-will comes in because the Lake Express ferry received a very controversial federally subsidized loan to start their business (minimizing the financial risk taken by the individuals starting the company). Much of the community around the Badger felt like this was unfair because it amounted to the federal government subsidizing one company to compete against another. Much of the community around the Lake express ferry thought that the Badger people were just whining, or didn't care how it happened as long as their community saw the economic gain of the new ferry.
I forget some of the details now, but IIRC it appeared especially controversial because this was an unusual application of this particular maritime subsidy program and the congressional representative heading the relevant committee happens to have the ship builder in their district that built the Lake Express ferry. So, to some people it looked like thinly-veiled quid pro quo.
Not trying to argue a point here....just want people to know that (though the wikipedia war is childish), there is a lot more to the story than what's in the linked articles.
Yup...the Badger was one of the C&O ferries, built in the early 1950's. When C&O finally sold off the ferries another company (MWT I think) ran them primarily as freight ships for a while before they finally had to shut them down. It just wasn't profitable after it became so easy to get rail traffic through Chicago and when maintenance costs for the ferries increased with their age. The boats sat idle for a while before a businessman invested a bunch of money to refurbish one ship (the Badger) as primarily a passenger ship in the early 1990's. It is still a coal-fired steam ship (reciprocating, not turbines)....really interesting both historically and mechanically. I know TFA was about the wikipedia war, but the underlying political debate that started the ill-will between these companies is also really interesting and doesn't get mentioned much in the linked articles or the wikipedia entries.
At least as far as WiFi is concerned, it really seems like a must-have in order to make them useful. The target market for these machines is in developing countries where the buildings are not outfitted for wired network access. It is much easier to install the infrastructure for one wireless access point rather than rewire the whole building. This is the same reason wireless phones have taken off so quickly in developing places that didn't even have landline phones before. It takes far less capital investment to get wireless connectivity up and running.
Do you have a better idea? It seems like there must be a better way to do this, but the reality is that he's getting speeds much better than any automatic method to try and speed things up. The article claims his code produce a speed increase of ~30% on supercomputing platforms. That's nothing to shrug off just because the method of getting it seems clumsy. Would you rather do without those speedups because you didn't like the way he got there?
I can't wait until they start coming out with digital video technology that emulates the warmth and depth of VHS. I'll bet that opportunity doesn't slip by some marketing department somewhere...